


Make a Statement

by aunt_zelda



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bisexual Steve Rogers, Blow Jobs, Brainwashing, Canon Disabled Character, Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov Friendship, Coming Out, Coping, Dancing, Deaf Clint Barton, Dirty Talk, Exhibitionism, Frottage, Gay Bar, Homophobia, Homophobic Language, Literal Sleeping Together, M/M, Memory Loss, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Minor Clint Barton/Natasha Romanov, National Public Radio, Nonverbal Communication, Original Character(s), Outing, Panic Attacks, Paranoia, Past Brainwashing, Period-Typical Homophobia, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Protective Natasha, Public Relations, Public Relations Manager Darcy Lewis, Sex Tapes, Sex Work, Sign Language, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-11
Updated: 2016-12-11
Packaged: 2018-09-07 23:39:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 16,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8820883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aunt_zelda/pseuds/aunt_zelda
Summary: Canon-divergence after Winter Soldier, everyone lives at the Tower and Bucky is working through residual programming. When Gawker leaks photos and vintage film reels depicting pre-Serum Steve and Bucky having sex, a media circus ensues. Steve and Bucky have to open up about their past, and current, relationship to the media. Steve struggles at PR events and Bucky struggles at the Tower.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PilgrimKitty](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PilgrimKitty/gifts).



> Many months ago, Pilgrimkitty was feeling down, and I offered to write a quick Stucky fic to cheer them up based on a prompt for an AU they wanted. The fic grew and grew, my life got busier and busier, and I felt more and more guilty for constantly delaying. 
> 
> Now, at long last, the fic is complete. Instead of the quick little 3k "hope you feel better" fic I initially imagined it as, it has become the longest fic I've ever written. At least now it's a birthday present? 
> 
> This fic takes place in a canon divergence AU where Ultron doesn't happen. Most everyone lives at the Tower, it's post-WS, Bucky is here and he's healing. I imagined this to take place sometime during early 2016, what with Gawker still being operational. 
> 
> I describe some unusual coping methods for Bucky in this fic. This does not mean I think "everyone with PTSD does this" or "this is healthy," this is just how I wanted to write Bucky in this particular fic. 
> 
>  
> 
> Many thanks to Pilgrimkitty for the ridiculous patience, brainstorming, and ideas. 
> 
> Thanks to firstnameagent for jumping in as a last-minute beta. 
> 
>  
> 
> I tried to tag all warnings, but if you find something I didn't warn for, please let me know and I will add a new tag, no questions asked. My goal is to entertain, not upset, and I don't want anyone walking into a fic they weren't prepared to read.

Bucky is waiting outside his door when Steve leaves his bedroom to get breakfast in the morning. He’s sitting cross-legged on the floor, back to the wall, getting a perfect view of the entire hallway.

This isn’t unusual, though it is rarer than it used to be. At first, Bucky would be waiting outside Steve’s door every morning. Apparently he’d patrolled the hallways at night, always circling back to Steve’s room, but never coming inside. Even though Steve never locked his door, even though Steve had told Bucky to come in any time, night or day. It had taken a very long time for Bucky to actually take him up on that offer. 

Their current separate bedrooms are due to a combination of Stark’s assumptions and Bucky’s quiet insistence. When they sleep together, Bucky always leaves once Steve has drifted off. He still doesn’t trust himself to fall into a deep sleep beside Steve. Steve wishes this weren’t the case, but would rather walk over glass than tell Bucky that. Bucky is already weighed down with guilt; Steve won’t add to it.

“You check your phone?” Bucky asks, staring straight ahead. He’s wearing gray sweatpants and a Captain America t-shirt – the symbol faded and flaking over his chest. 

Steve knows that Bucky has a closet full of brand new clothes. He wears those sometimes, but he always seems most comfortable in the stuff he scrounges from thrift stores. Steve thinks it might be some kind of quiet rebellion thing – Hydra never let Bucky dress himself, and certainly not in second-hand stretched-out garments – but he’s never gotten around to asking. 

“What? No, not yet.” Steve’s brow furrows. “Why? Did something happen? Is the team assembling?”

Bucky shakes his head. He holds up his own phone by way of explanation. 

Steve takes it and reads the article pulled up on the tiny screen, under a masthead of one of the many news networks he’s still having trouble keeping straight. He scans the story and his stomach lurches. 

“Oh,” he says at last. “Oh … no.”

Bucky murmurs in assent. 

~*~

Darcy Lewis arrives before they’ve finished breakfast. She’s one of an array of public relations representatives, recommended by Thor and Jane, and has since proved herself indispensible. Steve prefers her over the others because she’s never been starstruck around him (witnessing Thor dispatch foes with his hammer has given Darcy a high standard for superheroes) and she’s never been visibly scared of Bucky. 

“So,” Darcy says, sitting down at the kitchen table. “Are the photos and the film real?”

Steve and Bucky exchange a look.

Darcy sighs. “Look, this is going to be a long day for all of us. So why don’t you stop wasting time and just tell me the truth? You get to decide what I tell the press, remember?”

Bucky nods slightly and looks away. 

“Yes, it’s real. All of it.” Steve says. 

Darcy whistles. “Wow. Ok. This just got a million times more complicated.” She texts one-handed and keeps her eyes on Steve. “There’s a lot we have to talk about and decide.”

“What’s there to decide?” Bucky snaps, startling Steve and Darcy. “It’s our business, no one else’s.”

Darcy stops texting. “Mr. Barnes, I –”

Steve leans forward. “I think this is a bit of a generational problem, Darcy. I haven’t done a lot of reading on this sort of thing, but … is this really news-worthy? This is our private business, not something the entire world needs to see on their … feed, I think, is the word?”

Darcy nods. “Yeah, feed. Well, unfortunately for you, this is very news-worthy. And it’s only gonna get bigger the longer you two stay silent about it. If they can’t quote you directly, they’ll speculate on what you might say in the future. Anything to stay on air.” 

Steve frowns. From what he’s seen of current televised news programs, that seems likely. Bucky crosses his arms and glares out the window.

Darcy sets her phone down. “Why don’t you tell me how this happened, and then we’ll talk about the types of stories we can sell to the press. Start at the beginning.”

Steve glances at Bucky, who sighs and nods slightly.

Steve nods. “Ok, well, this goes way back …” 

~*~

It was dangerous, coming to one of the bars. Police would raid, when their payoffs from the mob didn’t come through on time, or just to let off steam. It was why Bucky had insisted on accompanying Steve, at first, to protect him from getting hit in the face with a club and tossed in the back of a wagon. Of course it hadn’t taken long for Bucky to reveal the real reason he’d followed Steve to the kind of bar where the only people in dresses sure as hell weren’t dames. 

They’d fooled around a bit before all that, not talked about it until much later. Hands on each other, getting each other off at night with the lights out. After going to the bars a few times they’d had a proper talk, buzzed off the drinks a fairy in a wig redder than Bucky’s lips had bought them. Then it had been more than just hands late at night. Steve had practically passed out when Bucky had gotten his mouth around his dick the first time; Bucky had bitten his cheek to keep from yelling when Steve had returned the favor. 

Still, they hadn’t stopped going to the bars. Bucky liked to dance, and Steve liked to keep up with the regulars he knew. Out of towners sometimes caused trouble, trying to hassle Steve or get Bucky to come back to their hotel rooms. It never worked, and any fights they had got shuffled outside by the bar owners. 

That evening Bucky was dancing and Steve was watching, drinking at the bar. An older man had joined him, bought him a drink, and since he hadn’t grabbed at Steve and money was tight, Steve let him. Turned out he wasn’t from New York, he was visiting on business, and wanted some recommendations of places to visit from a local. He didn’t act like a cop, or a visiting mob man, so Steve had chatted, waving away Bucky’s concern when Bucky had shot him a worried look between dances. 

“Your boy, he is very beautiful,” the man said. He had the hint of an accent, a way of talking that wasn’t quite smooth. Perhaps he’d come to America as a child, or his parents had immigrated. 

Steve felt a stab of protective defensiveness. He knew he didn’t look like much of a threat, but he’d happily fight any man trying to go after Bucky. Bucky was _his_ goddamnit. 

“Thank you,” he said, and some of his feelings must have come out in his tone, because the man raised an eyebrow and looked him up and down, assessing. 

“I meant no offense. You are beautiful too. Very … slim,” the man licked his lips. “You must have many girls after you, now that so many boys are off in the war.”

Steve blushed. “Not really, no.” Dames preferred Bucky, seldom gave Steve the time of day, let alone any interest. 

“Their loss,” the man smirked, taking a drink. 

“What do you do?” Steve asked, wanting to steer the conversation away from the previous topic. 

“I am a photographer. Weddings, events, local newspaper back home,” the man waved a hand. 

Bucky joined them soon, as they were discussing the man’s hometown. Steve was still on his first glass, which Bucky took from him as he sat down, positioning himself between the man and Steve. 

The out of towner didn’t seem to care, continuing on his thread of conversation with Steve. “I do not venture to the big city much. It is a rare treat to visit, spend my time amongst … like-minded men.” The man smiled. “I am sure you understand, yes?”

Bucky shrugged. Steve squinted suspiciously. It wasn’t the first time a man had tried to go for Bucky and offered to take the pair of them on, accepting Steve as the price for getting their hands on Bucky in bed. 

“As such, I like to preserve my memories, for future enjoyment. Photographs and, rarely, film.” The man smiled fondly. “Film is such a delightful medium.”

That was a first. Steve felt a blush creeping up his neck. He’d suspected the man’s talk would turn blue eventually, but he hadn’t anticipated the manner in which it would. 

“What sort of girls do you think we are?” Bucky asked, idly turning the empty glass in his hand. “Ain’t even gonna buy us dinner first?” Bucky clicked his tongue dismissively. 

Steve smirked, but kept an eye on Bucky. If the man got outright lewd, Bucky was liable to turn violent, if Steve didn’t put a stop to things first. 

“Oh, I would not think of asking you to do such a thing for free.” 

Bucky was already moving but Steve reached out and held him back. 

Rent was due. Rent was due and they didn’t quite have it. The window was stuck. They needed new shoes before winter. 

“How much?” Steve asked. “We’re not saying ‘yes,’ just … curious.”

The man smiled. “For the two of you? Oh, I think … an even hundred?”

Rent was covered then, perfectly. 

But this man really wanted them. Steve smirked. “You can go higher, I think. 200.”

Bucky shared a glance with Steve, worried but tempted.

“130.”

“180.”

“170 is my final offer. There are other hungry boys in this bar.”

Steve nodded. 

“Hey, don’t I get a say in this?” Bucky asked, an edge to his tone.

“Of course, darling,” the man’s eyes flicked to Steve. “But I think we all know who wears the pants, between the two of you.”

Bucky barked a laugh. “Hey, for that much I’ll wear whatever you want me to.”

“Is that a promise?” the man’s eyebrows rose.

“… within reason.” Bucky amended, cheeks coloring. 

“We can negotiate on the way over,” Steve said, standing up. “Shall we?”

The man’s place wasn’t far. It was a studio, photography like he’d said, lots of drapes of fabric and lights on stands. The man set those in several corners of the room, switching them on. The room started to warm up, under the blazing lights. That and the alcohol buzzing in their veins got them flustered fast. 

“Pictures first, I think.” The man mused, setting up a camera. “Pictures, and then the filming.”

“Half the money, now,” Bucky said, folding his arms. “Ain’t giving you a free show.”

The man sighed, but acquiesced, removing several bills from a safe in the wall and handing them over. Bucky counted them, then nodded, sticking them in his jacket pocket. 

“How do you want us to … do this?” Steve asked, hesitant for the first time that night. 

“Start how you would normally. I will call out for you to freeze, take photos, and tell you to resume.” The man readied his camera. “Please, proceed.”

Bucky grabbed Steve and kissed him, fast and frantic. He was nervous, but he didn’t want to show it to Steve or himself, and certainly not to the out of towner. 

Steve tried to get lost in the moment. Sure, the room was unfamiliar, the lights were starting to make him sweat, but Bucky was there, kissing him, touching him like he was the most precious thing in the world. Steve could easily get lost in that.

Steve was pulling on Bucky’s shirt and Bucky had a hand at Steve’s waist when the man called out for them to freeze. They did, startled, and stayed as still as they could.

The camera clicked, endlessly it seemed, as they kissed, froze in place. 

“Resume,” the man sounded amused. 

Steve slid his hand down the front of Bucky’s pants, and the camera clicked with obvious delight. Steve pulled Bucky’s shirt off and smirked when he heard the out of towner groan. Bucky was pretty, and he got prettier the more you saw of him. Steve got behind Bucky and wrapped his arms around Bucky’s chest, let his hands wander up and down like he’d seen in a dirty picture once. The camera clicked frantically, but the man didn’t ask them to stop. 

Bucky pushed Steve onto the bed under the lights, pulled his pants and drawers down, wrapped a hand around Steve’s cock. 

“Wait.” The man called out. 

They did. It took everything Steve had to hold still like that, splayed out, naked and ready for Bucky, cock throbbing. 

“Resume.”

Bucky slid Steve further up on the bed, got down on his knees, and wrapped his lips around Steve’s cock. 

Steve threw back his head and moaned. His legs arched.

The camera clicked and clicked and clicked. Steve saw the out of towner moving closer, to get behind Bucky, get a different angle. Then he moved behind Steve’s head, looking down at Bucky. Click. Click. Click. 

“I’m close, Buck …” Steve whimpered. “Better stop now.”

Bucky grumbled but complied. “What do you want, Steve?” he asked, lips shiny and red. “Plenty we can do tonight.”

Steve smirked. “Well, for starters … you’re a bit overdressed for this party.”

Bucky laughed and got out of his pants. He was hard, dripping a little. He blushed when the camera flashed, crawled onto the bed with Steve right after. 

“I was thinking,” Steve said, twining his fingers with Bucky’s. “I was thinking … first I’ll do you, and then I wanna ride you. That sound good?”

Bucky choked. “S-sounds great, Steve,” he smiled, a little nervous but all kinds of excited. They didn’t do that often, not all the way, it was tricky and exhausting, mostly they got by with their hands and mouths.

“Good.” Steve looked at the out of towner. “Any particular way you want us to do this?”

“No, though I had assumed,” the man jerked his head at Bucky, “that he would be doing all the, well …”

Steve snorted. “Yeah, that’s how everyone thinks it goes. We do it both ways. That a problem?”

“No, not at all.” The out of towner grinned. “I think, after this first time, I will switch to film. Give you boys some time to recover your strength.”

Steve nodded. It sounded like a good plan. He and Bucky could get hard again pretty quick but it would take them a little while. 

“You got anything?” Steve asked. “For, you know, making things go easier?”

The man fumbled in desk drawers and produced a bottle of something that felt about right. They’d used better but they’d used worse too. 

“Tell me if it stings or anything,” Steve whispered to Bucky, slicking his fingers. 

“You mean more than normal?” Bucky smirked, and his smirk melted into an open-mouthed moan as Steve got to work. 

The camera clicked and clicked. The out of towner switched to another one around about the time Steve slid into Bucky and started thrusting, slow and careful. 

“’M not made of glass, punk,” Bucky protested, fingers gripping the sheets. 

Steve paced himself methodically. He’d had an asthma attack once when they’d done this, and that had scared them both so much they hadn’t tried again for months. That wasn’t something he wanted to repeat, especially not with all that money on the line. 

Still, he couldn’t hold off forever. He sped up, hips canting, lifting one of Bucky’s legs up over his shoulder to get a better angle. Bucky’s cock was bobbing up and down between them, dripping all over his stomach. 

“Steve … Stevie … I’m …” Bucky came, reaching up to get a hand on Steve’s shoulder. 

The camera caught it, if the timing of the flash was anything to go by. 

As Bucky shuddered and went boneless, Steve kept thrusting. He was close too, and in a few minutes he was cresting over the edge as well. Steve toppled and collapsed beside Bucky, getting an arm over Bucky’s chest. He smiled lazily at Bucky.

“Hey,” he murmured.

“Hey,” Bucky smiled. 

“Wonderful!” the man applauded. “And now, I shall ready the film.”

He bustled about in the background. Bucky and Steve panted together, warm under the blazing lights. 

“We don’t have to do this,” Bucky whispered. “We can just grab our clothes and go.”

“I can do it again,” Steve whispered back. “Besides, that’s a lot of money. Can’t just let it pass us by.”

Bucky grunted, but didn’t argue anymore. 

The man returned, a camera in his hands. “Now, this will be frustrating at first, because there is only so long the film lasts inside the camera before I have to put in new canisters. I will ask that you stop, or severely slow yourselves this time, to enable me to reload the camera. Do you understand?”

Steve nodded. He’d known people who used cameras before, artists and students who filmed the crowds in the streets. 

Bucky shrugged. “Just give us a minute to get going again.”

It didn’t take much. Steve slicked his fingers again and started working himself open, relaxing his muscles, and that got Bucky’s cock twitching with interest before long. Bucky sat up against the headboard and Steve straddled him.

“Ready?” Steve glanced over his shoulder. 

“Yes.” The man hefted the camera up, hand on the crank. “Begin.”

Steve slid down onto Bucky’s dick. He moaned, he couldn’t help it. 

The man cranked the handle on the camera’s side, generating a steady whirring noise. 

Steve shifted his knees on the mattress, thighs squeezing on either side of Bucky’s waist. He lifted himself up, and then slid back down, easing himself into a rhythm. Just as he’d begun to find the right pattern, the man called out for a pause.

“Wait! Out of film, I have to reload.”

“Jesus Christ …” Bucky groaned, digging his fingers into the mattress. “You’re so tight, Steve, I can’t … I can’t …”

“Yes, you can,” Steve huffed, grinning down at Bucky. “Don’t you dare think of beating me to the finish line. You hear me?”

Bucky smirked. “Yeah, Steve, I hear you.”

The man finished fussing with his camera. The handle cranked again. “Resume, please.”

Steve bounced on his knees. Bucky cried out, half agony and half joy. 

“Touch him … help him …” the man murmured.

Steve wasn’t sure if the man was talking to him, Bucky, or to himself. He reached down, found Bucky’s hand, and guided it up, wrapping both their hands around Steve’s cock. 

“Dammit! Wait, I need more film …” 

Now it was Steve’s turn to groan. He wasn’t sure how long he could restrain himself, especially now that Bucky’s fingers were on him. 

“Resume.” The man’s breathing was labored. 

“Go right ahead, Steve,” Bucky said, putting his free hand over Steve’s hipbone. “I wanna feel you first, I wanna feel you go all soft around me, please, Stevie, please …”

Steve’s breath caught in his throat and he came, shuddering and nearly falling from the bed. Bucky reached up and caught him, holding him upright. Bucky’s eyes were shining.

“Beautiful.” The man gasped behind them. “Ah … I need more film …”

“I’m close,” Bucky’s voice cracks. “I’m so close …”

“You can hold on, you can,” Steve insisted, leaning down, face close to Bucky’s. “Just a few more seconds …”

“Ah, resume!” the man’s camera whirred to life once more. 

Steve shifted his weight, hips rocking at an angle.

Bucky’s hips jerked and he pulled Steve down beside him, body shuddering with the aftershocks. Steve clung to him, ignoring the man and the camera entirely. 

“You did good,” Steve murmured. 

“You too,” Bucky grinned. He darted for Steve’s lips and they kissed, sloppy and wet, while the man wound through his last reel of film for the evening.


	2. Chapter 2

Though Steve limits himself to the bare minimum of details, that a man paid him and Bucky to perform for him and they had accepted his money, Steve still blushes telling Darcy the story behind the pictures and the film. 

“How were they found?” he asks. The out of towner must be long dead, and Steve can’t imagine the man’s children or grandchildren deciding to broadcast their relative’s pornography worldwide. 

“We’re not sure. They’re anonymous for now, but they must have been paid a lot by the media for the files. Probably went to Gawker first, they’ve done this kind of stuff before. Everyone else is censoring the images, not showing the film at all, but Gawker’s got it all up.”

Bucky looks up sharply. “Make them take it down.”

“Working on it,” Darcy holds up her buzzing phone. “Our lawyers are talking to their lawyers right now, I promise. It’ll be off Gawker soon, they can’t afford another major lawsuit, but –”

“The internet is forever,” Steve sighs. He learned that lesson quickly. Now that it’s out, it’ll never go away. People are probably putting the video on porn sites, downloading and saving the files to their own computers. It’ll never disappear now. 

“Right. You two need to release a statement, and soon.” Darcy flicks through her phone. “We have a few options. I brainstormed on the way over here.”

“Options?” Steve asks.

“Yes. One option is framing this as a one-time thing you two did when you were young and needed money.” Darcy shrugs. “I mean, everyone knows how poor you two were back in the day. You could issue a statement about how you regret it now, but you’re glad you lived to regret it, something like that. Plenty of celebrities these days have stuff in their pasts they’re not proud of, photoshoots, softcore porn careers, stripping to get through college …” her voice trails off. “That puts the focus on your economic needs at the time, before you were Captain America. People will still complain, protest, but making it an issue of money shifts the conversation.”

Steve considers it, briefly, before glancing at Bucky. 

Bucky looks like he’s ready to put his fist through the nearest wall.

“No,” Steve says. “It wasn’t a one-time thing, we don’t regret it, and we have nothing to be ashamed of.” He slides his hand across the table to rest beside Bucky’s, not touching, just being close. 

Bucky takes Steve’s hand in his own. 

Darcy looks at their hands, then back up to Steve. “Ok then. Well, your next best option is to come out, publically, about your relationship then and your relationship now. And it’s going to get very, very ugly. Christian Family Groups will flip out, Fox News is gonna start bashing you more than ever … you think the media was bad before? It’ll get so much worse.”

Steve nods. Though 2016 has many accepting social attitudes, there are still those who oppose people like him and Bucky from living their lives in peace. 

Bucky definitely looks like he’s ready to put his fist through the nearest wall.

Steve squeezes his hand. “Not everyone will, though. Young people are far more accepting these days. I’ve met married gay couples. Gay people can serve openly in the military now.”

Darcy nods. “That’s true. Public opinion has shifted drastically over the past few years. But it’s not going to be easy. I just want you two to be prepared for the worst of it.”

Steve slides his chair closer to Bucky’s. “Should it be a press conference?”

“Yeah. Press conference, then I’ll start booking you on TV shows. Ellen, obviously. Some late night shows. Anderson Cooper, if we can get him. Just to start with.” Darcy heads out, texting furiously before she’s even reached the elevator. 

When she’s gone, Steve turns all of his attention to Bucky. “Talk to me, Buck,” he says softly. 

Bucky wrenches his hand out of Steve’s. “I don’t like this.” He growls. “I don’t … I don’t want this.”

Steve frowns. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t want everyone knowing our business. Not this, not anything,” Bucky whispers. “I don’t mind the team knowing, it’s like with the Howlies. But I don’t want every person on the street knowing about us, knowing what we look like when we’re … together.” Bucky’s fist clenches, practically an unconscious movement. “And I don’t see why everyone in the world needs to know we’ve been doing this all our lives. You’re a national hero, they oughta show you some respect.”

“You’re a hero too,” Steve nudges Bucky. “More than me. I was never a POW. I never got experimented on against my will.”

Bucky shifts in his chair. 

“You’re a braver man than me by far, Buck. So I’ve gotta tell a bunch of cameras that I’m a queer. So what? I’m … I’m proud, to tell people you’re my best guy.” 

Bucky cracks a smile at that. 

“A world war and 70 years can’t keep us apart. Nothing 2016 can throw at us will keep us apart either.”

Bucky leans forward, pressing his head against Steve’s shoulder. Steve puts his arms around Bucky and holds him. Sometimes they’ve stayed like this for hours, holding each other. Sometimes Bucky’s gotten over-stimulated and pulled away after a few minutes. 

“I can’t go on tv, Steve,” Bucky says, voice slightly muffled. “I … I can’t.”

“That’s fine,” Steve says, holding Bucky tighter. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.”

“I don’t want you to be alone, but I … I can’t go on tv.” Bucky starts shaking slightly. “I’m sorry.”

Steve’s not sure when the tears start, but all of the sudden Bucky is crying, clinging to him desperately. He rubs circles around Bucky’s shoulders, breathes deeply, loudly, until Bucky is matching his breathing pattern. 

“It’s ok,” Steve murmurs, over and over again. “It’s going to be ok.”

He really hopes that’s the truth. 

~*~

The team arrives in ones and twos. Steve made the meeting for noon, just an hour before the press conference, but of course hardly anyone is on time. Thor is still adjusting to the concept of Midgardian timekeeping, Tony considers times “suggestions,” and Clint and Natasha only show up when they think it’s absolutely necessary. 

Sam arrives first, military habits being hard to break. He’s followed soon after by Natasha and Clint. Rhodey comes in, stretching from a workout. Thor bursts through the doors, chatting with Darcy. Bruce shuffles in looking like he’s had another rough night, and parks himself on the couch nearest the exit. Tony is, of course, the last to arrive.

“Thank you for all coming here on such short notice,” Steve glances at Bucky, in case Bucky wants to contribute something to the conversation before Steve makes the announcement. He used to just assume, and barge on ahead, before Bucky confronted him about it. That had been a fight, one of their first since Bucky had broken free of Hydra. As terrible as it had been, Steve had almost enjoyed the experience of Bucky shouting at him like they were still teenagers. It had been progress, for Bucky to stand up for himself. 

Bucky meets Steve’s eyes and signs _sorry_ quickly, circling his right hand in front of his chest. 

Automatically, Steve signs _it’s fine_ by holding his palm against his chest briefly. 

Steve catches Natasha’s eye as he straightens up. She’s smiling, the small, warm smile that Steve has come to associate with her unguarded self – at least as much of it as he gets to see. Her gaze flicks to Bucky, and back to Steve, and the smile deepens ever so slightly. 

“So, as I’m sure you’re all aware, some material has been leaked to the press concerning myself, and Bucky.” Steve begins. 

“Your _sex tape_ , you mean!” Tony bursts out. “What the hell, Cap?!”

That breaks the tension in the room, but replaces it with awkwardness. Darcy rolls her eyes. Clint cracks a smile and signs something to Natasha, which causes Natasha to elbow him in the side rather forcefully. Rhodey shoots a glare at Tony over his outburst. Bruce looks mildly uncomfortable. Thor looks confused. Sam raises his eyebrows. 

“Um, as I was about to say,” Steve soldiers forward. “Bucky and I were … and are … in a relationship.”

Tony splutters incoherently. 

“And evidence of our past has gone public.” Steve sighs. “I’m giving a press conference shortly where I will … come out, to the world. I thought I ought to let you all know before I told the press.”

Thor views the room bemusedly. “Is this uncommon in Midgard?” he asks. “I was not given to understand such couplings were unusual. Quite the contrary.”

That shocks Steve. “I … what?”

“You speak as if this is some … unusual event. Some scandal. You and the Warrior James have been coupled for months now, and no one saw fit to address the situation as somehow worthy of reproach.” Thor looks around the room. “Is this a Midgardian cultural custom I have misunderstood?”

The rest of the team glances around at each other. Darcy coughs, sounding suspiciously like she’s concealing a laugh. 

“You … knew?” Steve blinks, fixating on that. 

“Was it supposed to be secretive?” Thor looks slightly embarrassed, but not for himself. “I apologize, Captain Rogers, but … you were not exactly subtle.” He smiles in an all-too-knowing manner at Steve. 

“‘Subtle’ my ass!” Tony yelps. “The … what … you … you two … my dad never said …”

“Oh, Howard?” Bucky smirks, flashing Steve a lewd smile. “Hey, Steve, remember that night just outside of Paris? Gee, I wonder why Howard never told his kid _that_ story.”

It’s a lie, of sorts. They’d all gotten drunk and started playing games, daring each other to kiss in a circle, stupid kid stuff they’d all outgrown, but alcohol had made it seem like a good idea at the time. Howard had given it a try with a few of them, including Steve and Bucky, but had left to go find a friendly local woman before the party had gotten too intense. 

Still, there’s no reason Tony has to know the specifics. Steve smiles as if in remembrance, and Tony’s jaw drops. Rhodey lays a comforting hand on his friend’s shoulder, though he’s clearly struggling to keep himself from bursting out with laughter. 

“Back on topic,” Steve tries to steer things away from Tony’s personal crisis. “I’m not really sure how this will go over with the public. The media will be much more boisterous until this all blows over, so, I suggest you all prepare statements and change up your usual routes through the city.”

There’s some scattered nodding around the room, and some grateful looks. The media is always frustrating to deal with, and forewarning about a new story to be badgered about is a welcome thing. 

“Um, on a more serious note, Darcy’s told me there’s already calls for me to give up my shield.” Steve has been dreading this part of the announcement, but it has to be said. 

“Over my dead body.” Tony snaps, jolted out of his horrified staring into space while imagining his father and Bucky Barnes in WWII. “This team protects everyone, and that means everyone.”

“DADT was repealed, so there’s no legal case for it.” Sam says promptly. 

“Not to mention all the Civil Rights lawyers who’d take your case for free if the government was stupid enough to try and oust you.” Clint grins at the idea. “They’d fight to the death to get to defend Captain America against the big bad government.”

“I’d pay to see that,” Bruce cracks a rare smile.

“If there’s any serious fallout from this, it won’t be from the military. It’ll be from the government higher-ups, politicians and such.” Rhodey sighs heavily. “Hopefully it won’t come to that. It would set a nasty precedent for all veterans, people calling in with tips about their neighbors before they enlisted.”

Sam scowls and nods, clearly imagining the fallout of such a move. 

“These next few days are going to be very busy,” Darcy says, standing up and glancing at her phone. “Speaking of, you need to get downstairs for the press conference, Steve.”

Steve looks at Bucky again. 

Bucky signs a gesture that’s come to mean “give them hell,” something they used a lot during the War. 

Suddenly Steve is a kid again, in borrowed combat gear and three days out of Allied territory, about to ambush an outpost crawling with enemy soldiers. The memory is so sharp Steve can almost feel the cold air against his skin, expects to exhale and see his breath billowing in front of his face.

Steve nods to Bucky, and follows Darcy out of the room.


	3. Chapter 3

The press conference looks like any other, except that Steve is alone, not surrounded by the other Avengers discussing the latest terrorist plot or superpowered villain trying to do something dramatic. Though they’ve been cordoned off far from the press, Steve can see a crowd of protestors holding up signs that say things like “Captain Sex: Give Up Your Shield!” and “Steve Rogers Shames America.” Steve would love to launch into a rant about the internment camps where Japanese-Americans were sent during WWII, and the Jim Crow laws that he completely missed out on, and how America has plenty to feel ashamed of before getting to his personal life, but now is not the time. 

One of the PR reps greets the reporters, explains the agenda of the press conference – Steve is going to issue a statement, will take a few questions, and leave when he’s ready – and then motions for Steve to come forward. 

The reporters go silent as Steve reaches the podium. 

“Good afternoon,” Steve smiles warmly, masking his nerves. He’s performed for hundreds of trash-talking soldiers, he can handle a few reporters. “As I’m sure you’re all aware, photographs and film footage rumored to feature me in intimate situations have been distributed on the internet. I can confirm that those images and that footage are real. I do not know how they were brought to the public eye, but I am deeply troubled that material depicting my private life was so easily distributed. Call me old fashioned, but I believe that what happens between consenting adults should stay in the bedroom.”

That gets a murmur of nervous but polite laughter. Still, even that is enough to bolster Steve’s confidence. 

“The photographs and film footage were shot before I became Captain America, before I enlisted in the Army. I was in a relationship at the time with a man I trusted, and still trust, to this day: James Barnes. We are currently in a committed relationship after a long separation.” Steve steadies himself. Just like that, he’s said it. “I will now take a few questions.”

The first reporter, a woman for MSNBC, makes eye contact with Steve. “Are you willing to officially confirm your sexual orientation at this time, Captain?”

Steve has been ready for this. He’s been ready for it for some time, has combed the internet for articles and withdrawn numerous books from the library. “Yes. While I’ve never purposefully concealed my sexuality, there were times when I could not live as openly as I would have liked, particularly during World War Two. I am fortunate to have arrived in a time when such secrecy is no longer necessary. We did not have a proper word for it when I was young, but I have been attracted to men and women almost my entire life. I personally identify as bisexual.”

The reporters buzz with excitement. 

“I just want to repeat that – I am bisexual. I’ve read about many public figures who’ve been labeled as straight or gay by the media after saying what I’ve just said. I want this to be clear: I am bisexual.” Steve makes eye contact with several reporters, most of whom take notes on their phones. None of them, at least, will make that mistake. “Any other questions?”

“Can you disclose the identity of the person who took the photographs?” asks another reporter. 

“No, not with any certainty. We only met the once, and he did not give his full name.”

“For what purpose was he recording your, um, sex tape?” the same reporter asks, stumbling only slightly over the words. 

Steve sighs. He’d been hoping, perhaps, he could avoid this aspect of it until the one-on-one interviews later. “When I was young, it wasn’t unusual for closeted gay men visiting New York to come to the gay bars and … be themselves, for a short time. The man who took those photographs and filmed that footage wanted to immortalize that time for himself. I had no idea I would be Captain America someday, no idea that anyone other than that man would see the photos and film later, so I allowed him to film and photograph us.”

“Were you paid?” interrupts a reporter. Steve sees the badge for Fox News.

Darcy has advised him that he doesn’t have to confirm or deny if payment had been exchanged for the evening. But the possibility of documents, a checkbook, the man’s diary being discovered, had been raised. It isn’t impossible. If this is a ploy to discredit Steve to the public, that would be the next step: to produce authentic documents to go along with the footage and photos. 

“The man offered us a significant sum of money, at the time, when we were struggling to make our rent payments. We thought of it as modeling, to justify it to ourselves. Unfortunately, I have read that this sort of thing is not unusual even among today’s struggling young people.” Darcy had advised Steve to do that, twist every point into something socially relevant to modern day whenever possible. 

“But you took money, to perform sex acts for a stranger?” the Fox News reporter looks positively delighted, eyes glinting. 

“Yes, we did.” Steve faces the nearest camera. “And I do not regret it.”

Steve leaves the podium and heads back into the Tower, Darcy trailing behind him. 

“Well, could have been worse,” Darcy says, as they take the elevator upstairs. 

Steve presses a hand to his forehead. He can feel a headache coming on. 

~*~

The next few days consist of a long string of interviews and press conferences. Steve is whisked in and out of the Avengers Tower by Darcy and other PR reps for the Avengers, asked the same questions over and over. Every networks wants to air their interview with him, not footage bought from another network. 

Steve staggers out of the elevator after a particularly grueling evening news segment. He was going to get some food, but decides what he really wants is to see Bucky, if possible. Bucky’s been holed up in his own room since the first press conference and hasn’t emerged since. Steve knows he’s ok, knows food has been vanishing from the kitchen overnight. It’s not like it was when Bucky first moved into the Tower, when Bucky had stayed in his room all day and night, and opening his door a crack to take food off a tray from the hallway was a monumental achievement. 

Natasha and Clint are on one of the couches, signing to each other lazily. Clint wears high tech Stark aids, but he turns them off a lot in the Tower. If there’s an emergency, Jarvis brings up warning messages on various screens scattered around, and usually Natasha is there to nudge him before that. When not on missions they’re practically joined at the hip, hardly ever in a room without the other. (Steve long ago gave up on trying to decipher whether their relationship is sexual or not, deciding that if they wanted him to know they’ll let him know.) They sign, but not with gestures Steve recognizes. At first he thought it was the style shifting over time, the little he and Bucky had used as kids being swallowed up by a more streamlined modern vernacular. Then Sam, who knows modern ASL, had confessed he didn’t understand Clint and Natasha either. 

“I think it’s code, man,” Sam had grumbled one night halfway through a movie marathon. Bucky was curled up on Steve’s left, head on his lap, not quite asleep but not quite awake either. Sam was on Steve’s right, a bowl of popcorn and M&Ms between them. “Secret spy code. I’ve never seen it before, not with any of the guys at the VA.”

Sam had been the first to suggest signing, in the early days when Steve had brought Bucky to the Tower and had barely gotten twenty words out of him in a whole week. Quite a few vets, apparently, went nonverbal at times, or preferred to communicate nonverbally during especially stressful transition periods. Steve had been glad, for the first time in his life, that he’d been partially deaf as a kid, because that had forced him to learn different ways of communication in his youth. Learning a new language in 2015 would have taken time and patience neither he nor Bucky would have been able to spare.

Steve raises a hand in greeting to Clint and Natasha as he passes by. Clint signs something that makes Natasha laugh – a warm, comforting sound that draws some of the tension from Steve’s shoulders. As weird as it can sometimes get at the Tower, Steve does enjoy living among his teammates. Knowing that there are others nearby who’ve made strangeness work for them is comforting. 

Bucky’s door isn’t locked, and swings open when Steve knocks on it. Peering inside, Steve finds the room empty. Which means Bucky is either somewhere else in the Tower, or … in Steve’s room. 

Considering Bucky hasn’t been out and about for the past few days, if he’s in Steve’s room now, that probably means something is serious. Serious enough to warrant asking for Steve’s help. 

Steve knocks on his door before unlocking it. There’s ways Bucky could have prevented him from unlocking it, if that was what he wants. He did that a few times in the early days, locked himself in Steve’s room and blocked the door with furniture. Steve had let him, slept in the hallway fitfully until Bucky had opened the door. Today, though, the door opens easily. 

Right away, Steve knows that Bucky is in a bad way. The curtains are drawn and JARVIS has made the glass go dark. The furniture has been moved – not in any way a civilian would understand, but something Steve recognizes instantly: defensive positions, to provide cover.

Bucky is sitting on the floor, a towel in front of him and a battery-powered lamp with a red light next to his knee. Steve doesn’t want to look down, but he does anyway, unable to stop himself. 

He catalogues them, one by one, every weapon on the towel. The guns aren’t so bad, Steve is used to guns, and most of them have their clips out right now. The knives are harder to look at, because there are so many memories associated with knives and Bucky and moments of extreme stress. Then there are the … other weapons. Steve can’t even call some of them weapons, that’s too good a word for some of the things laid out on the towel. Tools, if he’s being generous. Implements. Things used to extract information by causing pain and suffering. Items classified by the UN as instruments of torture. 

Hydra would have called them “toys.” 

Steve really regrets reading some of those files they found, after clearing out a particular Hydra base. He regrets a lot of things. Not killing those men slower, that’s a big regret. 

Bucky looks up slowly as Steve enters, eyes squinting at the bright hallway light that filters in. 

Steve shuts the door, and, noting Bucky’s tense shoulders, locks it. He grabs the nearest chair and drags it in front of the door, wedging it under the handle. It wouldn’t keep out the Hulk, or Tony in his armor, or even Natasha and Clint for more than a few moments, but it’s not really about keeping people out. It’s the look of the thing, the gesture. 

Bucky’s shoulders relax, ever so slightly. 

Steve takes a cautious step forward, then another. When Bucky doesn’t retreat, Steve keeps coming, and sits down across from him, the towel and all it holds stretched out between them. 

The red light gives Bucky a sickly look. Steve hates it, wants to open the window, or just shut off the damn lamp, but that’s not what Bucky wants right now.

Steve opens his mouth and Bucky flinches. 

Steve closes his mouth and signs. _Status report?_

Bucky relaxes more, raises his hands. _Not field ready._

 _At ease._ Steve signs. 

Bucky hesitates. 

_At ease!_ Steve signs with larger hand gestures, a stern expression on his face. He hopes that he doesn’t have to call Bucky ‘soldier,’ he hopes tonight isn’t one of those nights …

Bucky sinks into a slouch. He begins to pack up the weapons, one by one, settling them into cases and secreting them around the room. Steve doesn’t move, just watches as Bucky does this. 

Eventually, Bucky comes to stand behind Steve. One hand, the warm one, not the cold one, comes to rest against Steve’s cheek, thumb stroking Steve’s ear briefly. 

Steve wishes that Bucky would say something, but knows in the pit of his stomach that there’s a good chance it would come out in Russian. He doesn’t think he could handle that right now, hearing Bucky’s voice with a stranger’s accent. 

He allows himself to be guided to his feet, lead the few paces around the darkened room, and steered into bed and under the sheets. The sick feeling in Steve’s stomach lets up a bit when he feels Bucky slide in beside him, underneath the blankets and sheets. If this were one of the really bad nights, Bucky wouldn’t be under the covers, wouldn’t be on the bed even, would start shaking if Steve tried to pull him close.

That had horrified Steve at first, until he’d coaxed some answers out of Bucky. It’s about touch and proximity, and feeling overwhelmed, in those moments. It’s nothing to do with the bed itself, or the activities people can get up to in a bed. Bucky had actually laughed when Steve had asked, assured him: “Hydra didn’t see me as a person. I was their weapon, Steve. You wouldn’t fuck a gun, would you?” Bucky had shifted, and then said, voice quieter, “Sometimes I just … the touching, the heat, it’s too much. Even though I really want to be touching you, even just your hand, it’s … it’s like it burns me, right down through the skin, to the bone, burns me from the inside out.”

Tonight isn’t one of those nights. Tonight Bucky wants to touch him, to feel their closeness. Bucky wraps an arm around Steve’s chest, reaches until he finds one of Steve’s hands and grasps it, meshing their fingers together. His breath flutters against Steve’s neck, his legs slide in and tangle with Steve’s. Steve arches slightly, shoulders pushing back against Bucky’s chest. Bucky moves with him, pushes back gradually so they’re pressed against each other. Steve’s shirt has ridden up slightly; he can feel the warmth of Bucky’s skin against the small of his back – a stripe of bared flesh between Bucky’s shirt and the baggy sweatpants he wears more often than not. 

Steve aches to speak to him, to whisper words of comfort. But he doesn’t want to shatter the silence blanketing them in the room. If Bucky wants words, he’ll ask. 

Bucky rests his chin on Steve’s shoulder for a long time, before turning his head and falling against the pillow. He’s asleep within a few breaths, his already relaxed body losing the last bits of tension entirely. 

Steve closes his eyes and follows soon after.


	4. Chapter 4

Bucky doesn’t talk about it, so Steve doesn’t either. Bucky returns to his room at nights, comes to breakfast in the mornings, even trains with Steve a few times that week. He holds the bag as Steve punches it, smiling as his feet slide on the floor.

“What’s so funny?” Steve huffs, sweating. He’ll hit the showers in a few minutes, his muscles have just started to burn in the good way. 

“You used to be so small,” Bucky grins. “Coulda fit my hands around your waist. Look at you now.” Bucky looks, and then he _Looks_ , eyes raking Steve up and down. 

Steve’s face goes red, and not just from the exertion of exercise. 

Bucky is with him at the latest briefing. The team of PR representatives, including Darcy, gives them updates on the various twitter trends, news outlet positions, official statements from government officials, tumblr memes, and overall sentiments. Apparently there’s technology in place that can analyze information all over the internet and bring back percentages of positives and negatives, break them down by nationality and age and gender and location. It makes Steve’s head spin. Bucky leans forward intently, assessing this new information for future use. Steve gets an uncomfortable mental image of Bucky as the Winter Soldier sitting in on HYDRA briefings. 

“Fox News,” Darcy’s lip curls. “They want an interview. If you refuse, they’ll spin it however they want to. You should at least do it. At worst, it’ll give Buzzfeed something to use for a ‘top ten most badass lines by Captain America during his Fox News interview’ list.”

Steve nods, steeling himself. There were battles in the war that he felt less apprehensive about.

“Mr. Barnes?” Darcy asks. 

“If I go on Fox News I will actually murder someone.” Bucky says. “I’m not exaggerating, I’m serious. It’s a security risk for me to be anywhere near that place.”

Darcy nods. “That’s fair. Just checking.” 

The interview, such as it is, doesn’t last long. Fox doesn’t even invite Steve into the studio, they interview him from a van in front of Avengers Tower, so he has to converse with the reporters back in the studio via crackling microphones. 

It begins badly and doesn’t improve. The Fox reporters try to steamroll over him, yelling and insisting he should resign as Captain America. A representative for some Christian fundamentalist group is on as well, and starts ranting about sinners corrupting America with their perverse sexuality.

Once he can get a word in edgewise, Steve just lets loose, talking points be damned. “What I find fascinating is that you all seem to think queer people were invented twenty years ago.” Steve smiles, masking his frustration. “I hate to break it to you, but we’ve been here for a very long time, and we’re not going anywhere.”

The Fox News talking head tries to corral the conversation. “This isn’t about homosexuality, Captain Rogers,” he wheedles, though the twitch of his lips indicates that it’s absolutely about that. “It’s about the example you set, for America, for children –”

“Oh, I’m so glad we finally got there!” Steve beams, the kind of smile that used to mean some punk from out of town was about to get his ass kicked by a fairy half his size and a third his weight. “The number of homeless LGBTQ children in this country is appalling. Many have been disowned by their families and are forced to live in overcrowded and underfunded shelters, or on the streets. Before this story about my private life went public, I was discouraged from speaking out about these current events. But now, well, now it’s personal.” Steve keeps smiling. 

The camera crew running the tech glances at each other nervously. The sound guy takes a half step back, unwilling to look Steve in the eye. 

Steve once made a Nazi officer piss himself, with just the expression on his face right now. It’s good to know he didn’t lose everything when he went under the ice. 

The interviewer splutters a few more questions, the Christian fundamentalist rants a bit more, and just as Steve is launching into another spiel, the Fox News reporter claims they’re out of time.

“I’m so sure,” Steve adds a few more degrees of glint to his smile. “Maybe next time you’ll actually invite me into your studio, instead of interviewing me all the way out here. I thought this wasn’t about fear, gentlemen?” 

One of the camera crew snorts a laugh and claps his hand over his mouth. 

“Thank you, Captain Rogers,” the Fox News reporter looks a bit red in the face. “Though perhaps next time you won’t be a captain anymore.”

The camera feed cuts out.

Steve storms back into the Tower, not staying to watch the camera crew pack up. The reporter’s words echo in his head all the way up in the elevator, seemingly getting louder and snider as he remembers it over and over again. 

Can the government even take his shield? Can they strip him of his rank? To be fair, he’d been awarded the rank in a rather unusual way. Perhaps it wouldn’t even be an official process, just a piece of paperwork filed. 

Steve thinks of all the battles he fought, the men he lost, the men who’d followed him willingly, eagerly even, men whose families he’d never been able to honor. What does it matter who he sleeps with? His record is a matter of historical fact, not something to be debated by modern demagogues. 

Nobody’s hanging around in the common areas when Steve arrives upstairs, thank God: he doesn’t think he can handle interaction with anyone right now. Everything he wishes he could have shouted at Fox News plays in his mind. Steve’s hands twitch, pent-up energy making his blood boil. He’d sometimes get like this after a skirmish in the war, one that hadn’t lasted long and been over quickly, left him bursting at the seams for something to use all that energy against. 

Back then, the Howlies had grinned and joked and elbowed Bucky, telling him “You’re up, Barnes,” and kept watch while Bucky and Steve had ducked in somewhere relatively hidden for a quick and dirty fuck. Sometimes they hadn’t had much in the way of cover, just a rundown abandoned farmhouse, or a cave of snow-streaked rocks, or, many times, a particularly large and sturdy tree. 

Steve goes to Bucky’s room and knocks on the door. If Bucky doesn’t answer, if he’s off somewhere else, Steve will go find another way to wind down. Today might be one of the days when Bucky doesn’t want to see anyone, doesn’t unlock the door even for meals. (Steve knows he hides food, under the pillows, in the vents, but so long as it’s kept wrapped in plastic or sealed up tight it’s none of his business.)

Bucky opens the door. His hair is tied back with one of those thick springy bands. He’s wearing a tanktop with a faded Captain America shield on it, and baggy loose pants. He’s sweating a bit; some of his hair is plastered to his forehead and neck. There’s music coming from the other side of the room, pulsating beats and modern lyrics: Bucky’s been working out.

“Uh, hey, Buck,” Steve gulps. This had used to be so easy. Just a look was all they’d needed, and they’d be off, arm in arm.

“Hey,” Bucky smirks. “Watched your interview.”

“Yeah?” Steve smiles and winces all at the same time. “Pretty bad, huh?”

“Well, I wouldn’t say it was FUBAR, but I think it coulda gone a bit better, Captain.” Bucky has a familiar look on his face. Steve dares to hope. 

Steve remembers that Bucky gets all worked up when he goes through training exercises, when the adrenaline gets going he wants to let off steam afterwards in various ways. Maybe … 

“I keep thinking about it, all the stuff I shoulda said,” Steve hears himself growling slightly, shakes his head to steady his tone. “Feel like I’m back in Germany and itching for a fight.”

“A fight, huh?” Bucky looks him up and down. “You sure that’s what you were lookin’ for, punk?” He leans against the doorframe, cocking his hip like a dame with a plan. 

Steve’s flushes red and hot as Bucky’s posture sends messages that go straight to Steve’s dick. It’s been a while since Bucky was this confident, this … like the old Bucky, the one even before the war, the one who used to stroll into gay bars and have every eye on him and _revel_ in it.

“Not gonna lie, I was kinda hoping you’d be up for that,” Steve blinks, not allowing himself to get too lost in the moment, “… but, if you’re not, I can … I can go work out, punch a bag across the room, it’s fine, Buck, you don’t have to –”

Bucky yanks the band from his hair and shakes it out. “I know, you skinny idiot. Now, get your ass in here.”

Steve can follow an order like that. He walks into Bucky’s room, vibrating with excitement now too, as well as pent-up adrenaline. 

Bucky shuts the door, locks it, crosses the room to turn off the music. 

There are weights scattered around the floor, a mat that still has the indents of Bucky’s hands. Maybe he was stretching, or doing handstands. Apparently he can do handstands for hours, no trouble, once hung upside down for almost a full day in order to assassinate a South American President. He told Steve about that over breakfast a few weeks back, as calm as a story about going for a quiet stroll in the park. 

Steve glances at the bed, the wall, the floor, shifting his weight from foot to foot. He can practically hear his blood pumping in his ears. 

“You’re a live wire, Rogers.” Bucky drawls, circling closer and closer. 

“Am I?” Steve smiles.

“Yeah. And you know what you gotta do with a live wire?” Bucky asks. He’s very close now.

“What?”

The answer comes by way of an attack. Not a painful one, but a swift and powerful application of force: Bucky dives at him, tackling Steve to the floor and pinning him down. 

Steve is shocked but muscle memory takes over fast. He grapples with Bucky, twisting, lashing out. He flips them so he’s the one on top, but that doesn’t last long. Bucky wriggles and jabs up and suddenly he’s got Steve facedown on the mat, the black plush material making squeaking noises in his ear. 

“You gotta ground it.” Bucky answers, to a question Steve’s practically forgotten at this point. 

Steve is hard, almost painfully so, but it’s the good kind of pain. He rocks his hips meaningfully, and is rewarded with a push from Bucky above him, assuring Steve that Bucky is just as affected by the proceedings.

“How do you want this, Rogers?” Bucky pants, reaching up and dragging his fingers along Steve’s scalp, his neck, under the collar of his shirt. “Got you right where I want you.”

“There’s no place else I’d rather be.” Steve huffs. 

“Sap.” Bucky says, but there’s a fondness in his tone. “Answer me.”

“Or what?” Steve shifts under Bucky, not enough of a struggle to escape, just enough to make Bucky grip him harder with thighs and arms and feet. 

“Or I’ll surprise you.”

Steve likes the sound of that a whole awful lot. “Go right ahead.”

Bucky chuckles, and that’s a nice sound, an easy sound that brings back a whole host of memories for Steve. All kinds of times when they were kids, when they were in the bars, when they were off duty with the Howlies … and now they’re making new memories, new good memories, to go along with the old. 

Bucky eases up off of Steve’s back, flips him over carefully, and starts unbuttoning Steve’s shirt. Steve moves to help him and Bucky leaves him to deal with the shirt. He goes right for Steve’s pants, the belt and buckle and zipper undone and the fabric being yanked down, down, until Bucky has to contend with Steve’s shoes in order to get his pants off completely. 

“Why’d you come in here all trussed up if you wanted this?” Bucky asks. 

“You’re right. Next time, I’ll show up naked.” Steve deadpans. 

Bucky looks up at him, eyes narrowed. “You wouldn’t dare.”

Steve grins. “Well, now I have to, sometime.”

“Oh, confident are we?” Bucky finally gets Steve’s pants off. “What makes you think I’ll let you back in here for another round?” his tone is light, his eyes are sparkling. 

Steve props himself up on his elbows. “I’ve been told I have some rather … compelling talents.”

“Oh yeah?” Bucky raises his eyebrows. “Are you fast?”

Steve glares at the ancient insult from their childhood, often lobbed at dames who went on too many dates and let boys go below the waist in parked cars. Nothing wrong with that, he knows, but it still stings. “No. Just the one man in my life,” he arches up meaningfully. “My one and only. He’s my best guy.”

“Really?” Bucky smiles, tracing his fingers along Steve’s thighs. “Tell me more about him.”

Steve smirks. He’s happy to lavish praise on Bucky for hours, if Bucky would ever let him go on that long. 

“Oh, well, he’s gorgeous, and he knows it. You know the type. Could have anyone in the world and he settled for little old me.” Steve bucks his hips, making the double meaning clear. 

Bucky blushes and momentarily looks away. Steve mentally calls that a victory. 

“Little, huh?” Bucky smirks, wrapping a hand around Steve’s fully erect cock. “Well then, he should have no trouble doing this.” He darts down and takes Steve into his mouth, practically _swallowing_ him.

Steve gasps in shock, riveted in pace. He wants to arch up but he’s worried of choking Bucky, forces himself to remain still, to let Bucky control the speed, the angle, everything. He wants this, but only however Bucky wants it. 

Something that’s different about Bucky that Steve likes, is how he acts when he’s going down on Steve. Not that his technique has changed much since the 1940s, but there is a minor but significant difference. Used to be that Bucky would keep his eyes shut during; now, he keeps his eyes open and staring right up at Steve. 

It takes every ounce of Steve’s willpower not to come in the initial first moments. Bucky stares up at him, lips wrapped around Steve’s cock, head bobbing up and down. It’s like something out of a pornographic picture, but without the vaguely dirty feelings Steve got from looking at those back in the day. 

Steve tries, he tries so hard to hold on, to wait, but Bucky is relentless. 

“Buck, I’m gonna … you gotta stop …” he pants, reaching down to put a hand on Bucky’s head and stop him from continuing. 

Bucky reaches up and bats Steve’s hand away. Then he takes a deep breath, releases his hand’s grip on Steve’s cock, and takes Steve’s length all the way into his throat. 

Steve’s head falls back against the mat, and he comes. His hips cant upwards and Bucky makes an awful sound, and then Bucky is spitting and laughing and Steve can see stars hovering in front of his eyes.

Bucky crawls up to lie down beside Steve, lips red and a mixture of drool and come dripping from the corner of his mouth. “What’s your status?” he asks, eyes shining with amusement. 

“Five by five,” Steve manages, trying to get his breath back. “And you?”

“Got a bit of a situation,” Bucky rolls over and grinds the outline of his cock against Steve’s thigh. 

“Mmm, that’s ah … serious situation you’ve got there …” Steve struggles to keep his composure. “I’ll defer to your judgment, Sergeant.”

“Oh you will, will you?” Bucky grins and reaches down, shoving his sweatpants around his ankles. He’s not wearing any underwear. “Well, roll onto your side, Captain, and follow my lead.”

Steve does, wincing as the mat sticks to his sweaty skin somewhat before relinquishing him. He shifts onto his side, and feels Bucky moving closer and closer to him. 

“Open your legs just a bit … ahhhhhh, yeah, like that,” Bucky slides into the space between Steve’s legs, just underneath Steve’s soft spent cock. “Move with me.”

Steve rocks back against Bucky as Bucky begins to thrust against him. It’s not the easiest position to maintain, lying on the floor, but it’s manageable. They’ve certainly had sex in more uncomfortable places, and managed more difficult positions too. 

Sometime during the proceedings, Steve’s cock begins to twitch with interest. Even with the supersoldier serum, Steve can’t get hard again that quickly, but his dick’s always been a bit greedy about that sort of thing. 

Bucky shudders and presses his mouth against the crook of Steve’s neck, not quite a bite and not quite a kiss. His cock pulses once, twice, and Bucky slumps flat onto his back. 

Steve twists around to look at Bucky, ignoring the vaguely unpleasant stickiness on his thighs and belly. He reaches an arm out and hesitates, remembering that sometimes now after sex Bucky prefers not to be touched.

Bucky grabs Steve’s arm and pulls it over his body, tangling their limbs into a sweaty half-hug. 

“You owe me a new mat, punk,” Bucky grumbles after their breathing has slowed back to a steady pace. 

“Noted,” Steve smiles, running his fingers through Bucky’s sweaty hair. “You gonna hit the showers with me?”

Bucky nods. He squints at Steve’s neck and reaches out, tracing a line around the sore spot. “You should cover that, people will see.”

“I want them to see.” Steve says. 

Bucky looks away, but he’s smiling fondly. “Sap,” he says again, before getting up and heading for his shower.

Steve heaves himself upright and follows.


	5. Chapter 5

Steve chooses his next interview on a whim, at random from a list the media team pre-approves. It’s a list of public access tv stations run by local colleges, all liberal-leaning, all hosted by young media students. He ends up on a set with blazing lights and threadbare chairs that are surely older than the children interviewing him. The two hosts, rainbow-haired and gender non-conforming, stutter and stumble initially with the interview, but relax as Steve proves to be his usual charming self. 

“There’s been a lot of talk about how you ended up in those photos and on that film reel. We’ve all heard what your PR team drafted, but how about you tell us in your own words?” Finley, the one with hair like those colorful NASA pictures of galaxies, asks.

Steve grins. “Well, I helped them draft that statement, so it’s already a bit of my own words. But now that I’ve given several interviews, I’ve been advised that I can be a little more candid now.”

The hosts lean forward eagerly. Phoenix, the one with hair like a flame, grins.

“It was difficult to find work in those days,” Steve starts. “I was sick a lot, before the serum, and medicine was extremely expensive. One night Buck and I were in a bar, and a man offered to give us a lot of money for a ‘photoshoot.’ Well, we were young but we weren’t stupid, we knew what he meant.” Steve raises his eyebrows meaningfully.

Phoenix laughs a little. Finley nudges them in the side. 

“We decided to take him up on the offer. A few hours of a little awkwardness, and rent was paid for two months. And we had enough left over for groceries for a few weeks.” Steve spreads his hands. “I’ve been informed that this is not an unusual experience for young people even today.”

“Yeah, it’s really not,” Phoenix confirms.

“We’ve had sex workers as guests on our show before. Anonymously, of course. The stigma is still very much out there. Not to mention laws.” Finley scowls. 

“I’m not completely familiar with modern laws about such exchanges. I need to educate myself on that, and many other things.” Steve says. “There’s quite a lot to catch up on, after the years I spent frozen.”

“Do you consider yourself a former sex-worker?” Phoenix asks suddenly. 

Steve stares at them in shock. “To be perfectly honest, I hadn’t thought of it like that until you asked. Perhaps it’s technically true, but I’m not sure I have a right to call myself that. I wasn’t risking prison or worse on a routine basis.”

Phoenix and Finely exchange a look.

“Does it bother you, that people are calling you, um … rude words for sex workers?” Finley asks, navigating the linguistic restrictions of public access tv carefully. 

Steve has considered this extensively. There’s all manner of nastiness online about him and Bucky. He’s tried to avoid it but it’s inescapable in some areas, the comment sections of every article online is full of strangers he’s never met calling him every foul name they can think of and some he’s sure they’re inventing. 

“It bothers me that it’s something they think is worthy of derision. It was something we did for survival, to get through the winter and make sure we had food for a month.” Steve pauses, gathering his thoughts. “Now, I don’t think anyone should be driven to do things like that out of survival, but plenty of people work jobs they personally find repulsive for survival. I’ve seen waitresses and cashiers in stores screamed at and degraded by customers and their own bosses, am I supposed to consider them somehow less exploited than people who make movies in their home and distribute them online? This is the result of a much larger problem than people offering to pay to see other people engage in sexual activities.”

Finley and Phoenix nod. 

“But, like I said, I need to educate myself on these issues. I lost a lot of time, and I have a lot to catch up on.” Steve smiles. “Now, would someone please ask me about something other than my sex tape?”

Phoenix laughs. Finley scans through a sheaf of questions.

“Well, we did have some of our crew submit questions they wanted to ask you, if we had time. Which we do. So, first up … bananas, apparently they were different in your day?”

Steve’s face lights up. “Ok, let me tell you about bananas …” 

~*~

“Cute kids.” Bucky says later that night. They’re watching the rebroadcast of the show late in the Tower. He likes the hair on the kids, wild colors, bold and beautiful. Steve tells him he was bold as a kid, but it’s hard to remember sometimes. The details are fuzzy, vague, like a movie he watched while half-asleep. 

Steve stretches in that way he does when he’s pretending to be casual. 

Bucky braces himself for something. He’s not sure what, but Steve’s about to ask him something important, pretending it’s not important. 

“So … I’ve run through the worst of the press circuit … what are your thoughts on doing an interview?”

“No tv.” Bucky is adamant about that, has been from the start. Too many people watching, camera people and sound people and producers. Even taped, it’d be too much of a risk. 

Steve nods.

Bucky hopes that’s the end of it.

“… what about radio?”

Bucky opens his mouth automatically to object but the idea makes him pause. Radio. Him and some interviewer in a room, no audience, no cameras. Hell, he could even do it over the phone if he wanted, he’d heard that before on the BBC radio shows he streams from the internet. 

“… I’ll think about it,” Bucky says, surprising himself. 

The hopeful look Steve flashes him is worth it. It makes Bucky wonder if maybe he should just do it, throw himself to the lions on the off chance it works out for the best. Even if he fucks it up, Steve will still love him, support him, still look at him like he hung the moon. 

“People still listen to the radio, Rogers?” Bucky grins. 

“I do.”

“You’re old, you don’t count.”

“You listen too. You have the NPR app on your Stark Phone.”

Oh, right. Bucky does. 

“How do you get on NPR?” Bucky asks suddenly, an idea forming in his head. 

“I think we just ask the PR team to call them, and they make time for you.” Steve nudges Bucky in the side. “You’re kinda a big deal, Buck.”

Bucky knows Steve means that in a nice way, but it’s hard to fight off the sick feeling in his stomach. He used to be a big deal because he was the Winter Soldier, a figure of fear and legend. It’s hard enough to shake that association in his own mind, let alone in the public eye. 

~*~

“This is Fresh Air, I’m Terry Gross. My guest, Avengers member James Barnes, is a World War Two veteran and recent celebrity. Declared missing, presumed dead, not once but twice in the past century, he broke free of HYDRA brainwashing and has dedicated his new life to defending the world from terrorists, alien invasions, and superpowered threats. Famously elusive to the media, he has been pursued for interviews since his return to the public eye to no avail, until tonight. Mr. Barnes, welcome to Fresh Air.” 

Bucky forces a small smile and leans closer to the microphone. “Thank you for having me, Ms. Gross.”

Terry Gross smiles at him. “So, let’s get right to it. You’ve held an extremely low profile since joining the Avengers. No public appearances, no interviews, until tonight. Why now?”

“There’s a lot of reasons,” Bucky shifts in his chair. “At first, it was because I was still somewhat … unpredictable. Mentally, I mean. I have PTSD, from combat, and from what I went through when HYDRA was holding me. For the first few months after I broke free from HYDRA, I didn’t really interact with the other Avengers, and not at all with the outside world. I mostly stayed in my room and spoke with therapists. I could barely make it down the hall to the kitchen, much less into a television studio.”

Terry Gross nods encouragingly. 

“Then, well, I was kind of sick of talking about myself, to be honest,” Bucky huffs a laugh. “Like I said, I was talking to therapists, and doctors, and Natalia – uh, the Black Widow – and Steve, so much, every day, about everything that had happened to me, sorting it all out. Talked myself hoarse a few times, I didn’t realize that could happen.”

“Oh, it can!” Terry raises her hand. “I can attest to that. Sometimes I’ve double-booked interviews. Not a mistake I’ll make again.”

Bucky nods. “So, yeah. I didn’t want to go over it all again, on the news circuit. I watched the other Avengers go on talk shows, newsrooms, and they had to keep repeating the same information over and over. I didn’t want to do that. Some of that stuff, it’s painful enough telling somebody about it once.” Bucky feels his face flicker slightly. He hopes Terry Gross doesn’t push him on that point. There are things he’s only ever told Steve, at night, in the dark, barely more than a whisper. There’s things he’s only ever told Natalia, that no one else needs to ever hear. Then there’s things he’s only ever told Steve when Steve was fast asleep, just to pretend he’d told someone. 

“That must have been exhausting, recounting it over and over again. How did you cope during your first months with the Avengers? I can’t imagine living in that Tower is especially quiet and relaxing.”

Bucky bites his lip. There are things he could say that would likely inspire pity from Terry Gross, and pity and disgust from the listeners to her show. “I didn’t cope well, at first. This is difficult for me to admit. I was raised in a very … different time than today’s society. Men weren’t supposed to talk about this stuff, y’know? Weren’t supposed to need help. Never mind soldiers. I still have trouble wrapping my head around the fact that shell-shock is ok to talk about now.” Bucky runs a hand through his hair. “The therapists and doctors helped a lot. Talking to Natalia helped a lot. She and I had been through similar situations at times, especially in the 80s, so it was good to have someone who could confirm a few of my memories for me. Most of the people … involved … in what happened to me around that time are dead now, so I can’t really ask them to help me sort out my memories. But the biggest help was, and is, Steve.” 

“Let’s talk about Steve,” Terry says, seizing on that point. “The big story recently was the sex scandal and controversy surrounding a collection of vintage photos and film strips released to the internet earlier this month. Those materials outed you and Captain Rogers as lovers before the war. Last week, Captain Rogers outed himself as bisexual and your relationship as current. What were your reactions to all of this?”

“That’s … wow, that’s a lot.” Bucky admits. “Could you narrow it down a little?”

“Of course. Ah, did you know he was going to come out in that press conference?”

“I knew he would if he were asked,” Bucky says. “If nobody had asked, he was planning to do it on Ellen’s show. He was kinda secretly hoping he’d get to do it then. Steve’s always been a bit of a performer, I don’t think that’ll ever go away.”

Terry smiles warmly. “You’ve known him for a very long time, haven’t you?”

“Since he was a punk kid in Brooklyn, yeah,” Bucky grins. “You’ve seen the pictures of him before the super soldier serum, right? Skinny little thing? That guy … didn’t matter how big the bullies were, he’d fight ’em. One time he busted up his whole hand punching a guy three times his size, this bully who’d been pickin’ on some Italian kids. People seem to think I’m the wild card, I’m the loose cannon, because I’m so quiet all the time. But that’s always been Steve, and that’s always gonna be Steve.”

“It was certainly bold of him to come out, even in today’s political climate, as such a public figure. Have you felt any pressure to do something similar?”

Bucky hesitates briefly, thinking over his response. “Well, first of all, I want to put a stop to all that chatter online that Steve outed me without my permission. Steve and I talked it over beforehand, and I knew what he was going to do and say before he told the press. I’m not comfortable with public media appearances; that’s why I wasn’t with him at that press conference. As to my, uh, how I’d define myself …” Bucky feels the urge to bite down, grind his teeth against a mouth guard. 

He has one back at the Tower, a secret thing he keeps hidden from Steve, keeps in his room under his bed. Sometimes Bucky curls up underneath the bed and slides the curved rubber into his mouth, bites down and lets his thoughts melt away. He isn’t Bucky then, he isn’t the Winter Soldier, he’s just … a thing. A forgotten thing under a bed, stored away, disused and discarded. Nothing can harm him, because he’s not himself anymore, he’s a thing. He doesn’t need to think, or feel, or move. He just … lays there. 

Bucky’s going to need to do that once he gets back. He can feel it already. 

“… all I’m going to say, at this time, is that I’m in love with Steve Rogers.” Bucky says at last. “I have been ever since we were a pair of nobodies in Brooklyn. Every day I wake up and I’m grateful that we live in a time when I can say that, when he can say that, and we can be who we are without worrying what our teammates will say, if our landlords will kick us out, if we’ll be able to eat this month. We’ve been through a lot, and I mean a lot, war and death and miracles. I think I’m one of the luckiest guys in history, since we both lived through it all and now we’re here, together.”

Terry Gross blinks rapidly, rubbing at the corner of her eye briefly. “And on that note, we’re going to transition into a short break. When we return, I’ll be asking James Barnes about life among the Avengers.”

The On Air sign flickers off and the Off Air sign thrums to life. 

“Do you need anything?” Terry Gross asks. “Water?”

Bucky shakes his head. “Thanks, I’m fine.”

Terry sips from a mug of coffee that must be lukewarm at this point. “I wanted to thank you again for agreeing to be on my show. I know you had your pick of any news outlet, and you chose mine.”

“Well, it’s radio,” Bucky shrugs. “And, uh, I listen to the show a lot. A lot of NPR, really. The voices are soothing.”

Terry Gross looks ready to ask something else, but the warning light starts to flash. “We’re coming back in 10 … 9 … 8 …” she counts off with her fingers after that. 

“If you’re just joining us tonight, my guest is James Barnes, World War 2 combat veteran and current member of the Avengers.” Terry says, slipping back into her measured, professional tone. “Let’s talk about the Avengers. We’ve all seen the press conferences. But what’s it like living in the Tower?”

Bucky smiles, pleased by this change of track. “Well, he’s gonna be mad at me for telling the world about this, but Steve loves to cook. Especially bread. He can’t stand all this processed food that’s so popular these days. If we were allowed to, we’d have chicken coops on the roof. I’m serious.”

“You’re kidding.” Terry looks delighted. 

“Not at all. Sometimes he goes undercover to Farmer’s Markets at 5am to buy organic vegetables. Tony keeps trying to send assistants out to do that but Steve says they don’t pick the right stuff. And they don’t know how to haggle.”

“Captain America haggles?”

“Like an elderly neighborhood grandma.” Bucky says, completely deadpan. 

Terry Gross laughs. “This is my favorite interview of the year, hands down. I shouldn’t say that, but I am.”

“Ask me about Thor.” Bucky prompts her. 

“What’s Thor like? In the Tower?” Terry asks. 

“He’s so eager. He wants to understand _everything_. Steve and I have to take these uh, history classes, basically, catching us up on how things work now, and how they changed. Linguistics, cultural events, media, all that. Thor sits in on them. He takes notes. Like, hand-written notes. He’s got amazing handwriting, but it’s in these runes that nobody else can read. Drives Stark up the wall. Stark keeps trying to give him tablets and Thor keeps calling them ‘charming’ and ‘quaint.’ The technology in Asgard is so advanced, what we have looks really out of date to him. Which just drives Stark up the wall even more.”

Terry looks like she wants to be taking notes as well.

“Thor spars with the Hulk. He’s the only one who can take it, really. He _laughs_. It’s fun to him. We lock them in a sealed chamber and they just, fight, for hours. Calms the Hulk down and gives Thor someone who can actually give him a bit of a challenge.” 

Terry glances down at a sheet of notes. “There’s a bit of tension between Tony Stark and Steve Rogers in public, especially at press conferences. Would you care to comment on that?”

Bucky wonders how to tread carefully about this topic. “I think … I think it doesn’t help that Steve and I, we knew Howard Stark back in the day. Tony looks a lot like him, y’know, and sometimes we forget he’s not Howard. And that really bothers him, because you can tell getting out from under his dad’s shadow has been a big part of his life. And then we show up, bringing Howard back into the limelight, and Tony doesn’t like that.” Bucky sighs. “I think if you asked Tony, he’d tell you something else, and if you asked Steve, he’d tell you something else. That’s what it looks like to me, though.”

Terry nods. “Any other insider trivia you can tell us about?”

“Movie nights require complex voting and spreadsheets. Deciding on something and managing to get everyone together for a movie night is harder than some of our battle plans have been.”

“Do you have any personal favorites?”

Bucky’s currently on a Soviet-era cinema kick, but he doesn’t want to tell the world about that. “My favorites are the really cheesy action movies from the 90s. We like to critique those, point out all the inaccuracies with the guns and the way fighting works. Natalia’s the best at that, but me and Clint are usually tied for second place.” Bucky shakes his head. “Movies are fun, but they get a lot of stuff wrong.” 

“… and I’m afraid that’s all the time we have for this interview.” Terry Gross looks truly regretful. “Thank you for joining us tonight, James.”

“Thank you for putting up with me.” Bucky cracks a smile, the kind that used to charm every girl in the neighborhood. 

Terry Gross smiles back at him, a little color coming to her cheeks, before launching into her closing statement and wrapping up the show. The music filters in and the “on air” light flickers off. 

Steve is waiting for him outside the studio. “How’d it go?” he asks, scanning Bucky’s face nervously. “I couldn’t hear anything.”

“At ease.” Bucky grins, squeezing Steve’s shoulder. “It went fine, Steve. Terry’s a doll, asked all the right questions. I talked a whole lot about you.”

“Oh?” Steve smiles, drawing Bucky close. “Really? All good, I hope?”

“Of course,” Bucky presses a quick kiss to Steve’s neck. “Nothing bad about you I could say, even I wanted to.”

“Hey, that’s unfair,” Steve thinks for a moment. “I … uh …” 

“While you’re thinkin’ of some non-existent flaw, can we get going, Rogers?” Bucky nudges Steve in the side. “All that talk wore me out.”

Terry Gross emerges from the studio, clad in a jacket and shrugging a bag over her shoulder. She pauses, spotting them.

“Good evening, Mr. Barnes, Captain Rogers,” she says, color coming to her cheeks. “Thank you again, Mr. Barnes, for the interview. It was an honor.”

“I think she’s sweet on me,” Bucky whispers to Steve, as Terry Gross heads for the elevators.

“She’s got good taste,” Steve murmurs, darting forward to kiss Bucky’s cheek. “Let’s go home.”


	6. Chapter 6

The next day, Bucky’s words are plastered over all the major news networks. Sound clips of the interview are played everywhere. It isn’t long before someone online mixes the clips up, sets music to it, and autotunes the whole mess. First Bucky is annoyed, and then he catches himself humming it. 

They get more requests for interviews with Bucky, now that he’s broken his silence. Darcy shoots them all down, though she reminds Bucky periodically of them in case he changes his mind. 

Bucky dwells on it, as he lies in bed, works out to obnoxious and incomprehensible modern music, eats breakfast with Steve and Natasha and Clint. He dwells on it as he holds the punching bag for Steve during Steve’s work outs, dodges awkward attempts at conversation from Tony, goes to museums in disguise with Sam. He dwells on it as he watches bizarre television with Clint and Natasha, organizes and reorganizes his weaponry, attends Earth culture lectures alongside Thor. He dwells on it as he readies himself for a stretch of time underneath his bed, in the dark, with the mouth guard. 

Bucky doesn’t dwell on it underneath the bed though. He doesn’t dwell on anything then. 

He finds that he needs time underneath the bed less and less. Bucky’s not certain the need will ever go away entirely, but he doesn’t spend hours and hours under there anymore. Sometimes he goes several days in a row without needing it. His record thus far is eight days, something he was actually proud of, but unable to explain to Steve. Steve doesn’t know that he does it at all. Steve would pretend not to be bothered, but would glance at Bucky with worry and Bucky wants to avoid that at all costs. He’s worried Steve enough already, enough for more than two lifetimes. 

Bucky will need it less and less. Steve will never find the mouth guard and will never find him underneath the bed. Bucky will never have to explain this to him. 

Natalia … Natasha, she knows. It was her who had obtained the mouth guard for him, her only question as to whether he needed it to be a specific color or not. 

“Sometimes I go into the closet in my bedroom and close the door. I stand there for hours, not moving, breathing shallowly, in the dark.” She had confessed to him, when she had given him the mouth guard. “They used to put us back into our boxes, when they were done playing with the dolls. And every time they let us out, it was like being reborn.”

Bucky had nodded. It had been much the same with him, when he was the Winter Soldier. 

“You know where to find me, if you ever want to talk.” Natasha had said, made sure he’d seen her eyes. “Any time, night or day, it does not matter. _Ponimaesh_?”

“ _Da_ ,” Bucky had said, without even realizing they’d slipped into Russian. 

Natasha had nodded, and left him. 

Now, Bucky wonders about more interviews. Terry Gross had been fine, but Bucky doesn’t think he could manage anything more intense than that. A calm conversation with a single interviewer in a lone studio had been possible. Something with a studio audience, or multiple interviewers, Bucky sees only disaster down that path. 

Still, it’s far more than he’d ever imagined he’d be capable of, in the early days of living in the Tower. Getting out of bed had been an enormous feat, remembering that he should feed himself three times a day had been a seemingly impossible task, looking people in the eye had churned his stomach, speaking in any language at all had been painful, speaking in English and staying rooted to English had taken all of his strength. They’d sent in Natalia, who’d spoken to him in Russian until he’d answered back. Then she’d brought in Steve, and at first Bucky had only looked at him, really looked at him, like he was going to draw Steve, and wasn’t that funny, Steve was the artist, and that memory had broken the floodgates and brought everything rushing back all at once. Steve had held his hands and anchored him,. Bucky knows that if Steve hadn’t been there he’d have drowned. 

Sometimes he still feels like drowning, lost in memories he’s not sure he’ll ever be able to sort through properly. Bucky’s made his peace with the fact that it might not all come back to him. He treasures what does return, and tries not to mourn what remains lost. 

He can dress himself now. He can remember to eat, to wash, to speak in a single language at a time. He can train with Steve, speak with Natasha, without going into attack patterns. He can speak to strangers in controlled environments. 

Bucky doesn’t need validation from the news outlets. Every smile from Steve, every nod from Natasha, every time he looks himself in the eye in the mirror, that’s all he needs. 

~*~

One of Steve’s favorite new discoveries is the myriad of ways one can listen to music in the modern day. There’s so much music! At first it overwhelmed him, but as he learned more about modern technology and how to sort through the clutter, he was able to enjoy it in reasonable doses. 

Custom playlists of popular music from Steve’s childhood are bookmarked by the dozens on his Stark devices. He hunts through music archives for recordings from clubs that, ok, he never went to, but the sound is close enough to how he remembers the bands in the clubs he and Bucky frequented. 

Steve was never much of a dancer. His health, and his bad luck with girls, had prevented him from devoting much time to that. Bucky though, Bucky had been a great dancer. Girls had loved going out on the town with him, because he knew all the moves and kept his hands above their waists on the dance floor. When Bucky and Steve had gone to the gay bars, Bucky had danced with every queen that would let him, twirling big men in big gowns while Steve had watched. Steve had felt a little jealous at the start, but that had quelled once he’d realized that Bucky only had eyes for him, and was going home with him every night. 

Bucky had tried to teach Steve the steps, especially in their apartment on cold days, to warm each other up. It had all been a lost cause, except for slower dances that were little more than shuffling while pressed up close together. That, and the lindy hop. If they took it carefully, Steve could manage the lindy hop. On good days, they could spin each other around the apartment, feet flying, and Steve had felt invincible. A few nights, when Steve had tipped back a few glasses and Bucky had danced through every queen in the place, they’d danced together, drawn the eyes of half the club. 

Now, a million miles away from then, Steve dances in the kitchen. The floor is big and glossy, and all the other Avengers are off doing their own press conferences or otherwise occupied for the rest of the day elsewhere. Steve checked with JARVIS for everyone’s calendars: the Tower is practically empty of Avengers. Bruce is somewhere buried in his lab, Bucky is around, but the Tower is decently clear. 

Perfect opportunity for Steve to practice a little dancing. There’s bread rising in the oven, because as convenient as it is to buy bread Steve can’t shake the appeal of being able to order flour in enormous bags and haul it into this kitchen and just … bake. It’s not as though the bread is especially good, but it’s something he made, so that makes up for a lot. 

Steve has JARVIS play one of his favorite “mixes” from the internet, and starts finding the pattern. He jumps through a few of the steps, messes up, corrects himself, and begins again. Steve starts to reach as if for a partner, spinning the imaginary person out and bringing them back into his arms. The music speeds up and so does Steve’s footwork, effortlessly completing the sets of steps that used to leave him panting in his Brooklyn apartment. 

And then all of the sudden, Steve spins around and Bucky is standing in the kitchen doorway. 

Steve freezes, arms outstretched to an invisible partner, one foot hovering in mid-air. 

“JARVIS, turn off the music,” Steve says, putting his foot down and letting his arms fall to his sides. He’s blushing, but any personal embarrassment he feels is being swallowed up by anxiety and concern for Bucky. What if Bucky doesn’t remember how to dance? What if Steve just reminded him of that, of that gap in his memory that might never return?

Bucky takes a few steps forward. “JARVIS?” he coughs, clearing his throat. “Bring back the music, please.”

The music begins again.

Bucky takes Steve’s hands in his. “I think … I think I’m a little rusty,” he says, lowering his eyes almost demurely. “Go easy on me, doll?”

Steve chokes out a laugh, worried he might start crying, though from sadness or joy he’s not entirely sure. It’s difficult to say, sometimes, when it comes to Bucky and his struggles to remember their shared past. 

Bucky is rusty, stepping where he shouldn’t and when he shouldn’t, forgetting arm movements until Steve reminds him how. But soon, before the first song is even completed, Bucky is back into it.

“This was easier when you were smaller,” Bucky complains, as they twist their arms around each other. “I could just pick you up and spin you around when I wanted.”

“You still can, if you want to,” Steve points out as they bounce from one side of the kitchen to the other. “Not sure it’ll be especially graceful though.”

“Oh please, I’ve seen you fight.” Bucky smirks. “You’re better suited to the ballet lineup than combat, Rogers.”

“I take that as a compliment,” Steve fires back. “Ballet is a lethal sport, and I respect anyone with the commitment to the craft.”

They’re still dancing half an hour later, when the bread is cooling on the stovetop and Darcy arrives for their weekly social media briefing. She hesitates in the doorway until Steve asks JARVIS to turn of the music off.

Darcy waves. “So, I’ve just had an idea … can I run it by you two?”

Darcy films a video of Steve and Bucky dancing in the kitchen, and then uploads it to the official Avengers twitter account. It’s favorited and retweeted over and over. By evening it’s everywhere online. By morning the news networks are broadcasting clips. By the weekend it’s gone viral. Celebrities recreate it, college students recreate it, elderly gay couples recreate it. 

Soon, nobody even mentions the sex tape anymore, or the photos. Cute queer couples dancing is far more interesting and shareable than the ethically questionable private images of a couple distributed against their will. The only thing more popular online is funny cats. 

“I don’t think we can be more popular than cats,” Steve says, as they watch a report about the most popular videos trending online. 

“We can try,” Bucky says, like he’s promising to go into battle. 

Steve glances at him, and it’s Bucky who cracks first, laughing at his own joke. Steve starts laughing too, pushes Bucky’s shoulder, and from there it’s a couple shoves and tumbling movements until Bucky’s got Steve pinned to the couch underneath him. He goes limp draped over Steve’s chest, head on Steve’s shoulder, breath slowing to a steady rhythm. 

Steve reaches for the tv remote and shuts off the tv. He wraps one arm around Bucky, then the other, holding him close. “You wanna sleep?” he asks softly.

“Yeah. You got me?” Bucky murmurs, breath fluttering in Steve’s ear. 

“Always.” Steve promises. 

Bucky drifts off to sleep, and Steve follows after him.


End file.
